Published: 2006
Love your parents as long as they are there.
These are the haunting words that stayed in my mind after I have read For One More Day by Mitch Albom.
For reasons I can’t figure out, the last two books that I have read are both about parents who died. Maybe this is God’s way of reminding me to show love as long as they are there. Because once a parent is gone, he is gone and you can do nothing about it.
As I expected, Albom has shown his writing prowess especially about life after death. This novel is a short read but it is indeed ‘meaty’.
The story is about Charles ‘Chick’ Benetto who has become so broken after his mom Pauline ‘Posey’ died. As a son, Chick long for his father’s approval and love. As he strives to be a daddy’s boy, he unconsciously ignores the love that her mom has been giving him. He just realized how much his mom meant in his life after she died.
THE BLURB:
The story’s premise is plain yet it moved me. Albom has written the whole novel with the right amount of humor and emotion. His dialogues are not trying hard, they are just realistic.
I like how he inserted Chick’s ‘Times My Mother Stood Up For Me’ and ‘Times I Did Not Stand Up For My Mom’. Those life events are realistic and either heartbreaking or touching at the same time.
He ingeniously end and begin a scene in a vivid manner that you can clearly understood what is happening. You can never be lost in his way of storytelling.
Lastly, I like the ‘heart’ of the story. Well, all Albom books possess ‘heart’. This is not a thrilling or even fantastic novel as compared to the new modern novels, but the heart of the novel speaks for itself. The words are alive and it tugs the heart in a very special way.
THE TEARJERKER MOMENT:
The scene that put me close to tears was when Posey indirectly admitted that she cleaned houses to have enough money to send Chick and her sister in college. Albom niftily wrote the scene in the best way that can make the reader realized his point; there is nothing that a mother cannot and will not do for her child.
It is such a touching scene as Chick realized how much her mom loved him and how much he would have wanted to change the way he had behaved towards her mom.
THE HEART-TUGGING LINES:
“That’s the thing when your parents die, you feel like instead of going into every fight with backup, you are going into every fight alone.” – Chick
“When you look at your mother, you are looking at the purest love you will ever know.” – Chick
PICKED UP WISE WORDS:
“Kids chase the love that eludes them.”
“There is everything you know and there is everything that happens. When the two do not line up, you make a choice.”
“Don’t you ever tell a child something’s too hard.”
“Reading is like talking.”
“When a lost loved one appears before you, it’s your brain that fights it, not your heart.”
“When someone is truly in your heart, they’re never truly gone. They can come back to you even in unlikely times.”
“Sticking with your family is what makes it a family.”
“Behind all your stories is always your mother’s story, because hers is where yours begins.”
THE WRAP:
The novel ended in a ‘peaceful’ way. It is really amazing how Albom talks about death in a lively and not melancholic way.
THE MODAL:
If you want to have a break with those fantasy and complicated yet imaginary novels, this is a MUST read.
A Reading Writer 